by Liz Glodek
Artwork, “A Crowded Saturday” by Jack Savage
While driving I-80 in Pennsylvania,
near the Ohio border, I drove past
the dead body of a bear. Roadkill
I had never seen before. An animal
I have never seen outside a zoo,
rigor-frozen on the side of road,
its head snapped back, snout very near
the white line and car tires.
It had surprised me.
I didn’t even think to tell my husband
who sat next to me, looking up directions.
I wondered about the driver who hit it.
The astonishment at knocking the bear
down to its death on a car-filled
highway. And the question of how it
got to the interstate in the first place.